Our Hearts Turn Red
by foreverwriting9
Summary: "We're working toward it though, right? So I haven't missed anything?" Basically how the second half of Season Four brings Jane and Lisbon closer together.


_And I don't blame you, dear, _

_For running like you did, all these years, _

_I would do the same you best believe._

_The highway signs say we're close, _

_But I don't read those things anymore,_

_I never trusted my own eyes._

**The Lumineers, 'Stubborn Love'**

XXX

He wakes up in the hospital with the distinct feeling that something is missing. (A castle or a palace or something.)

He runs his hands experimentally over the starched sheets that cover his legs, and then closes his eyes, thinking. His name is Patrick Jane, and he is alive, but he doesn't feel _whole_. Feeling foolish, he wriggles his toes and fingers, just to make sure everything's intact.

Even then, something doesn't feel right.

He lets out a long, slow breath, trying to tamp down on the anxiety clawing at his stomach.

That's when he finds it.

Far in the back of his mind he discovers a half-demolished old building with shattered windows, missing walls, and more shadows than he can count. (It feels familiar, somehow.) When he looks inside the wreck, all he finds is the lingering smell of cinnamon and a small pony gazing up at him mournfully with the greenest eyes he's ever seen.

He's just about to reach out and touch the pony when he hears someone enter his room.

"Jane?"

He opens his eyes to find cinnamon and emerald green, and all he can think is that this woman is a part of the mysterious house in his mind, and she must be _extremely important to him_.

She sits down on the side of his bed, her fingers bumping accidentally against his knee as she steadies herself. "How're you feeling?"

"Excellent, I think," he says, but he means to say _better now_, because he most certainly does not feel excellent, but with her in the room, the aching, heavy weight in his chest suddenly subsides.

"It's good to see you breathing." The way she looks at him when she says it reminds him of strawberries and sunlight and trust, and he doesn't know why.

"Are we sleeping together?" It seems like a perfectly good question to ask, because she is close and beautiful and her presence makes everything stop _hurting_.

"Excuse me?" She looks confused, but certainly not horrified by the suggestion, so Jane continues.

"Well, you're a cop. That's obvious. But you're not treating me like a suspect, and I can't see any other reason for a police officer to come to my bedside. Unless we're sleeping together," he says, a shameless grin tugging at his mouth easily.

"You don't know who I am," she says, shocked. Her fingers twist into his sheets, her eyes sad and weary (and Jane realizes that she is very, very pretty when she's concerned).

Something melancholy settles itself low in his stomach. "Please don't take it personally. I'm sure you're quite memorable. I just...I've been through a lot. Apparently."

She takes a step away from him. "No, we are not sleeping together," she says, fumbling with the words.

But she was in the building inside his head, and that has to mean _something_. "We're working toward it though, right? So I haven't missed anything?"

She rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and Jane's heart gives a little lurch at the mannerism. _It seems so familiar_. He reaches toward this woman he knows but doesn't know, and grasps her jacket between his fingers. She's so _warm_, and it's only then that Jane realizes how cold and heavy every part of his body feels. He shivers and tugs on her jacket. "What's your name?"

XXX

Jane fixes the building in his mind (his memory palace, he remembers now) while he sits on the bench overlooking the spot where he supposedly almost died. He reconstructs the walls with the works of Shakespeare, and uses constellations to glue the windows back together. He's in the middle of painting the walls with the capitals of the world when he hears Lisbon approaching.

Her voice carries over the rustling of leaves and the quiet chirping of birds. "I heard you riled them up in there," she says. "That sounds like the Jane I know."

He can hear the smile in her voice, and as she slides down onto the bench next to him, he tears his gaze away from the sun-dappled water, and watches _her_ instead. For a moment, all he can see is origami frogs and a pale pink dress, and then Lisbon speaks again.

"Is anything coming back to you?"

Jane pauses, thinking through his half-restored memory palace. He wishes she could see it, that she could help him paint the walls with knowledge and build furniture with memories. But they can't do that. So instead, he shares bits and pieces of the building with her, lays out what little he remembers at her feet almost reverently. (He doesn't understand the little spurt of joy in his chest when her eyes light up with recognition.)

"So the memory palace is intact," she says with a smile.

There's a tug somewhere in the back of his mind at her words, and he suddenly hears himself promising that he will always protect her. "I told you about the memory palace?" he asks, surprised and confused and scrambling to fix the building in his mind, because he really needs to find out what this woman means to him.

She watches him for a second. "We're friends," she says simply.

Jane thinks they're probably much more.

XXX

Several months and cases later, Lisbon pulls her car to a stop outside the Barca's pizza place and then turns to Jane in the passenger seat. They have spent the past week working two different cases, and it surprises her to realize how much she's honestly missed him, and how much like home it feels now that they're working together again.

Jane smiles at her, and she wonders for a moment if he knows what she's thinking. "Now we wait," he says, settling back against his seat.

"Tell me what happened with Darcy," she insists, because the whole reason she and Jane have been reunited is that Jane seems to have driven the FBI agent away with his ridiculousness. (That's just Lisbon's assumption.)

He turns away from her, his gaze drifting up to the afternoon sky.

"Jane, c'mon." She pokes him in the arm.

The corners of his mouth twitch upward at her childish behavior, and he turns back around to face her suddenly, his fingers catching her wrist. The look of surprise on her face makes something in his stomach flip.

"Let's play a game," he says, letting his thumb slide across her pulse point.

Lisbon's eyes are wary. "What kind of game?"

Jane grins at her. "Just a game," he says. "To pass the time." His thumb makes another sweep over her wrist, and he doesn't miss the way her pulse spikes in response. _He missed her so much_. The realization is sudden and aching. (He hasn't missed someone like this since-)

He clears his throat and tears his gaze away from her. "I spy...something red."

She pulls her hand out of his grasp and crosses her arms over her chest. "I am not playing this game with you."

Jane shifts in his seat, moving so that he faces Lisbon fully. "How about twenty questions?" he asks.

"No."

"Tic tac toe?" His fingers creep across the center console and trace _x_s and _o_s along the sleeve of her jacket.

She doesn't quite manage to stop the smile that tugs at her mouth. "No," she says with a roll of her eyes.

Jane pouts for a moment, and then his eyes light up. (And sometimes, he is the most beautiful part of Lisbon's day.) "Can I guess what you spy?" He's practically bouncing with excitement at the thought, and really, Lisbon will never be able to deny him _anything_ when he acts like this.

She huffs, trying to act annoyed. "Knock yourself out, Jane."

His eyes crinkle as he regards her. "You spy..." he pauses, thinking. "Something blue," he finally says, and his tone carries a note of victory in it.

Lisbon turns away from him. "Nope."

"Liar."

"I'm not lying," she says, scrunching up her nose in an attempt at indignation.

"You are," he insists. "I can read your mind."

She spins back around to face him, fingers tapping impatiently against the center console. "Is this why you and Darcy aren't working together on the case anymore?" she asks. "Because your antics drove her up the wall?"

"Maybe." Jane shrugs. "It seems there is only one woman in my life who can handle my tomfoolery."

Lisbon's first response is to laugh, because he just used _tomfoolery_ in a sentence, and honestly, who does that anymore? Then the weight of his words hit home, and suddenly she can't breathe and something warm coils through her veins, settling itself deep in her chest. "Oh," is all she can manage.

He nods once, letting the silence stretch out between them.

She drops her gaze to the steering wheel, trailing her fingers lightly over the dashboard until there is a sudden pull at her elbow. Jane's hand presses into her arm insistently.

"Hangman?" he asks, his voice low and close.

Lisbon smiles slowly. "Sure, Jane," she says. "Let's play hangman."

XXX

"This is too creepy."

They are hiding in the morgue, in the dark, waiting to catch a killer when Lisbon says it, and Jane can tell from the way her eyes sweep over the nearby body bags that she absolutely means it.

"Killers like creepy," he says, as though that completely justifies what they are currently doing.

"I can't feel my feet," she huffs back at him. "They're freezing."

Jane leans in toward her, picking out the light green of her eyes in the dark. "Be patient."

She pins him with a death glare, annoyed and cold and so, _so_ ready to shoot him. Jane hides his smile in the high collar of his coat and then shuffles closer to her.

"Has it occurred to you that maybe your plan won't work?" she asks, running her hand over the legs of the metal table they're hiding under.

"Nope," he answers easily, the word crisp and clear in the icy air. Lisbon looks thoroughly unconvinced by his display of confidence and frowns at him. Jane moves so that his shoulder nudges hers. "C'mon, Lisbon," he says plaintively, "have a little faith." His fingers stretch out until they bump into her side, and then he allows them to splay over the bottom of her rib cage.

Her reaction is woefully predictable.

"Jane, what the he-" Her voice is an octave higher than normal and something unreadable and deadly sparks in her eyes.

He puts a finger to his lips. "Shhh."

She drops her voice, whispering sharply at him. "What are you doing?"

Jane removes his hand from her midsection and then shrugs off his coat. "I'm keeping you warm," he says, slipping the heavy overcoat around Lisbon's shoulders. "I'm saving you from frostbite."

She looks so shocked and pleased that Jane risks returning his hand to press against her side.

"Thank you," she says softly, clutching at the edges of his coat and practically burrowing into the newfound warmth.

Jane smiles, huddling closer to her. "Anything to keep my favorite CBI agent from freezing to death." His face is going a little numb and his fingers are thick with cold, but he finds that he doesn't really mind, because he is surrounded by death and Lisbon, and he is _happy_.

XXX

Lisbon finishes interrogating Lorelei much too soon, and suddenly she has no other reason to stay at the CBI for the night. Desperately, she tries to come up with superfluous paperwork to fill out or pointless conversations to initiate, because she simply doesn't want to go home. (It is cold and lonely, and all she'll end up doing is thinking. And she is _so_ tired of thinking.)

As she walks back toward her office, she catches sight of Jane spread out across his couch, and something inside her chest gives a quick, painful jerk.

"Jane?" Her voice echoes loudly around the empty offices.

His eyes flutter open, gaze hazy and unfocused as he swings his legs around to sit upright and stare back at her. "Yes, Lisbon?" he asks tiredly.

"Come here."

He furrows his brow, confused and still half-asleep. "What?"

"Just..." she trails off, swallowing roughly around the lump that suddenly forms in her throat. "Come here, Jane."

He stands up obediently and walks over to her, smoothing down the rumpled creases in his shirt. When he comes to a stop in front of her, she reaches down and takes his hand gently, pulling him toward the elevators. "C'mon," she says. _Let's go home._

He follows her down to the parking lot like the lost little child he sometimes is, and Lisbon keeps her fingers curled around his until they reach her car.

"Are we going home, Lisbon?" he asks, his hand clutched around the passenger side door handle.

(She doesn't know when he started referring to her apartment as _home_, but the word fills her with something sweet and dizzying. Something like hope.) "Yeah," she says, unlocking the car and sliding into her seat. "We're going home."

She doesn't remember the drive to her apartment. One moment they are sitting in the parking lot of the CBI staring at one another, and the next, Jane is opening the driver side door for her and gently prying the keys from her hand.

He swings the door to her apartment open with such ease that it is as if he's done it hundreds of times before, and Lisbon feels a steady ache building in the back of her throat at the thought. It only gets worse when Jane whispers a _home, sweet home_ in her ear.

Lisbon backs away from him. "There's tea in the kitchen somewhere," she says, gesturing vaguely, "and there should be some blankets on the couch-"

"Thank you, Lisbon." Jane presses a few fingers into her arm. "For everything."

She nods and then flees the room, because he is warm and his eyes are a deep, dark blue and he has been gone for _months_. (And she desperately wants to kiss him)

Quietly, she slips into her bedroom, shuts the door, and collapses onto her bed fully clothed. All she wants to do is sleep (and forget), but when she tries closing her eyes all she can see is a sky smeared with red and Jane being swallowed whole by the desert.

It doesn't surprise her when, minutes later, the door to her room clicks open and Jane appears, peeking in at her sadly.

"Can I...?" he trails off, unable to come up with the words to express exactly what he wants.

Lisbon glances up at him through the dark of her room and then pats the empty space on the bed beside her. Jane joins her quickly, as though he is afraid the offer might soon be revoked, and in his haste he forgets to take off his shoes. Without even thinking about it, Lisbon pushes herself up off the bed and begins untying his shoes for him, pulling them off clumsily once her brain finally catches up with her actions. She drops his shoes and then rolls away from him, turning over to face the wall rather than let him see the blush burning it's way across her cheeks.

The room goes deathly silent.

Then Jane moves toward her, his knuckles brushing against her hip and his warm breath curling against her neck as he settles himself behind her. He smells like freshly brewed tea, and for some reason, that makes Lisbon want to cry.

"I died today," she says eventually, her voice scratchy and low. (If she thinks back hard enough, she can still feel Jane's fingers gripping her elbow, can still taste the heat and dust of the desert on the back of her tongue.)

He makes a sound like he's clearing out his throat. "You look pretty good for having been beheaded."

Her laugh comes out sounding strangled, because it really shouldn't be that funny, but she hasn't laughed in weeks, and suddenly all the joy at having Jane back bubbles up in her chest, and she can't help the mirth that spills out. He taps his fingers along her spine while he waits for her to finish, grinning into her hair and reveling in the feeling of _home_.

"I missed you, Jane," Lisbon whispers to the wall. It's the first time she's said it since he disappeared and the words feel warm in her mouth.

He moves closer to her, his knee bumping into her calf. "I'm sorry." It's all he can offer her. His fingers catch the hem of her shirt and he tugs lightly until she acknowledges him. "I thought it was you," he says.

She squints at him. "What?"

"I thought you were the one who posted my bail."

Lisbon stares, finds she suddenly can't breathe.

"And I was so excited," Jane continues. "So excited that I would get to see you again, that you were willing to save me even after all of that." He reaches for her hand. "I'm never that excited to see anyone," he admits.

Lisbon squeezes his hand. "I would have done it, you know. I would have posted your bail in a heartbeat if I had known where you were."

"I know," Jane says, and really, that's enough.


End file.
